Retailers step up gold jewellery hallmarking

Leading jewellery retailers, including Tanishq, Malabar Gold & Diamonds, and Senco Gold & Diamonds, have stepped up gold jewellery hallmarking, which is set to become mandatory from June 1.“We have tied up with selected BIS accredited hallmarking centres, which we have ascertained, have good quality processes and appropriate capacity. We have commenced the process of hallmarking from these select centres to ensure that we are fully ready by June 1,” Ajoy Chawla, CEO, jewellery division (Tanishq), Titan Company, told ET.Chawla said the government has taken the right direction by making hallmarking mandatory for jewellery. “There are many hallmarking centres across the country. The government needs to ensure adequate oversight on these centres to ensure rigor in hallmarking standards is maintained,” Chawla said. “It will create a level playing field for jewellers at one end and protect consumers on the other.”However, several retailers said the majority of the jewellers in the unorganised sector may not migrate to hallmarking within the stipulated time frame.BIS hallmarking has been made mandatory for gold jewellery of 14, 18 and 22 carat sold from June 1. Failure to comply could attract a penalty of up to five times the cost of the object and imprisonment up to one year.Malabar Gold & Diamonds spends Rs 20 crore annually to hallmark the gold jewellery being sold at its stores in India and abroad, said Ahammed MP, chairman of the company.“As gold jewellery of sub-standard purity is still being sold to a number of consumers across the country by a section of retailers, and smuggled gold is being used to manufacture jewellery, BIS hallmarking will put a stop to those industry malpractices, bring in transparency in the trade and boost customer confidence,” said Ahammed MP. “Once BIS hallmarking becomes mandatory, customers won’t be able to resell gold jewellery without hallmark.”At present, only 32,000 jewellers out of 300,000 in the country sell hallmarked jewellery. “We are expecting that by June 1 nearly 84,000 GST-registered jewellers will opt for mandatory hallmarking,” said Uday Shinde, president of Indian Association of Hallmarking Centres.Suvankar Sen, CEO of Senco Gold & Diamonds, said “We already have tieups with more than nine hallmarking centres and working closely with them to develop the ecosystem and cover hallmarking of all our manufacturing.”Sen said the company spends Rs 4-5 crore every year on hallmarking. “Going forward, with our pace in growth in business, we believe our hallmarking budget will go up by 20-25%,” he said.Some gold jewellery traders are of the view that the government may again extend the hallmarking deadline by six months to January of 2022.But Surendra Mehta, national secretary of India Bullion & Jewellers Association, said, “That is not going to happen. The government had deferred the date for mandatory hallmarking from January 1 , 2021 to June 1, 2021, keeping in mind the outbreak of coronavirus. In this year’s Union Budget, mandatory hallmarking has been brought under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s time bound ‘zero-defect, zero-effect’ scheme, and it has been stated that gold hallmarking will become effective from June 1,” he said.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/2NLMvaa